Lumen Center: a story that starts from afar
For over 40 years Lumen Center has been a large laboratory that pursues excellence and has been able to draw inspiration and creative strength from international experiences and collaborations, but its greatest strength lies in the strictly Made in Italy production, since the origins.
Lumen Center was founded in France in 1976 by a group of artists including Gilles Derain, among the first to follow the "Union desartistesmodernes" movement and a prominent exponent of contemporary French design, holding the role of artistic director.
Gilles Derain inherited the intellectual property of the drawings (models and patents) of his artistic father Jacques Adnet, considered one of the most brilliant Modernist designers and architects on the French scene of the twentieth century and who stood out for the unprecedented use of industrial materials such as glass and steel, emphasizing functionality over ornamentation.
There was therefore a real passing of the baton: Jacques Adnet's models, including Quadro, MJA and Diane designed starting from 1929, were put into production and marketed with a French design and Italian production.
Among the first productions designed by Gilles Derain, the MCP lamp (Merci Pierre Chareau) certainly stands out, designed in 1979 and which was immediately such a great success that it was included in the collection of the Museum of Decorative Arts in Montreal. For Lumen Center, Gilles Derain signs numerous other collections of lamps such as: Omega, Torchère, Trylon, Eagle.
In 1992 Lumen Center was taken over by a Milanese entrepreneur and Lumen Center Italia was born. In the years in which Italian industrial design is recognized as excellence in the world, Lumen Center consolidates its position in the Italian and international lighting panorama also thanks to important collaborations with well-known Italian and international designers, including Jean-Michel Wilmotte, Amedeo G Cavalchini, Bernard Brousse, Enrico Azzimonti, Francesco Murano, Jamo Associates, Paolo Cappello, Setsu&ShinobuIto, Brian Rasmussen, Alberto Saggia and Valerio Sommella, VILLATOSCA DMC.
At the end of the nineties, the company came into contact with Panasonic's European Design Centre, VillaTosca Design Management Centre, jointly creating an important and ambitious interior design and lighting project for the Royal Pines Hotel in Urawa, Japan. The project is called "Life River" and still today represents the company's very high technical-production know-how, as well as the ability to create tailor-made projects with great flexibility.
Lumen Center was also the sponsor of the lighting of the food court of the Japan Pavilion at Expo 2015 and still illuminates the Veneranda Pinacoteca Ambrosiana in Milan which houses the important works of Leonardo Da Vinci, Titian, Raphael, Bruegel and Botticelli.
In 2020 the new chapter of Lumen Center begins to face the challenge of international markets. A new ownership and a new management motivated by the extraordinary potential of a company that over the years has been able to combine the excellence of Made in Italy with design, establishing itself as a point of reference for lighting design. The one launched and presented today at Euroluce2023 is a change that has a strategic and cultural value: experimenting with light, proposing a contemporary vision of light. Starting right from the name: Lumen Center .
